[Strategy] TH8.5 and TH9.5

TH8.5 is a war-based upgrade strategy. It entails upgrading to TH9 (usually after nearly maxing TH8), but leaving the TH9 defenses undone intentionally until your offensive upgrades are maxed out (or longer if you wish). So you would go to TH9, upgrade your army camps, CC, lab, spell factory, Archer Queen, and walls. You would wait to build the defenses, bombs, xbows, etc. This causes your base to score similarly to a TH8 in war matchups, but gives you a much stronger offense than any TH8. Obviously, TH9.5 is the same thing, but for high TH9s who upgrade to TH10. It is rare to see anyone talk about TH7.5 or lower because the upgrades there are so fast that it isn't typically worth pursuing as a strategy. It could be valuable in a lower level clan though, so I won't rule it out.

The keystone of it is understanding that xbows and inferno towers are BY FAR the most heavily weighted items in war matchmaking and ranking. So a rushed TH10 with two maxed infernos will outrank ANY TH9, almost no matter how badly the rest of the TH10's base is rushed. If you think about it, it makes sense. The inferno tower is ridiculously powerful, especially without freeze spells. Xbows similarly have reasonably high dps, but extremely long range and very high hp.

By avoiding these, you score much more closely to players who are really one TH lower than you, but you can attack players at the same level as you. Since you get two attacks, but only defend one base, you can net three stars for your clan every war. Get ten or so players to do this and your clan is well-neigh unstoppable.

In a simple case, imagine a 10 v 10 matchup where clan A has 10 mid to high TH8s. Clan B has 5 TH8.5s and 5 lower TH8s or TH7s. Who will win the war? It will be Clan B almost every single time. The 5 TH8.5s can essentially three star every base by themselves. Thus they almost never lose.

Note that one or two people doing this won't really have a big impact on your clan matchups, but getting 5 or more can be huge. Also, note that the cost is primarily that outside of wars you will get raided by players at the same or one higher TH than you and you will be helpless to defend your loot. So it is most effective if you do a .5 base that you do the following:

Raid a lot. At least, raid a lot more than you get raided. Have a solid strategy for farming and employ it wholesale.

Use a good farming base. Set your TH outside with collectors or DE drills next to it to entice snipes. Protect your loot as well as you can.

Spend your loot as soon as possible. You will be a sitting duck with full storages if you are using a .5 strategy. The TH which is one above you will particularly crush you. If you go to TH8.5 you have only a 10% loot penalty to TH10s. If your storages ever get above about 150K of each available, you will get three starred almost every time. There are very few TH10s who cannot three star a TH8 with almost any farming army. Keep a builder free for walls and heroes and dump as much as possible into these.

Find the right trophy range. In general, farming works out best for TH7s at 1200-1500, for TH8s at 1400-1700, for TH9s at 1700-2000 and for TH10s at 2000+. The reason for these ranges is that it is the level at which you will rarely see people who are two town halls or more below you (which will offer essentially no loot regardless of how much they actually have). Also, these ranges will best protect you from getting owned by people who are one TH above you (your worst enemy because they are much more powerful than you and they can get 90% of available loot). All that to say, as a .5, you will want to farm in the range that matches your old TH level, not your actual TH level. If you go to TH8.5, you shouldn't venture too far above 1800 or so cups or you will just get murdered by loot-starved TH10s and maxed TH9s. If you go below about 1400, you will mainly see TH7s and lower whom you will have a hard time looting profitably as the loot penalty is 50%+.

Considering that the benefits are mostly to your clan in wars, while the costs are borne almost entirely by you, you should only do this if you are serious about wars and are in a solid war clan. If you like to fly solo, or play in a farming clan, or are in a casual clan that only wars once or twice a week it is just not worth it.

However, if you are in a serious war clan or you want to be in one, this can be perfect. You get to donate high level troops, deliver impressive stars to your clan in wars, and help plan and strategize higher level attacks, all while counting as a lower level player in matchmaking when your clan goes to war. One other advantage is that once you decide you are ready to move on to a full TH9/TH10, it isn't that difficult to use your solid offense to get the loot you need to start building out the defenses.

TL;DR - TH8.5 is upgrading from TH8 to TH9 but focusing on offense rather than defense so you count as a lower level player defensively in war matchups, but you can beat stronger bases offensively. It's great for players in serious war clans and bad for almost everyone else because you can't protect your loot.

EDIT: You should go ahead a build the new bombs and traps because they also weigh very little in the war matchmaking algorithm. These have the potential to really surprise an attacker too. Someone who is hogging what looks like a TH8 base will not be expecting 4 giant bombs. If you want to build the new cannons, archer towers, and wiz tower, and not level them, you can. Level 1 defenses do not count for much either. However, the whole strategy is by degrees. In the most extreme of cases you could have a TH1 base defense with TH10 attacking ability, but that is probably overkill (and would cost a ton of gems). All you really need to do at minimum is avoid the xbows and infernos until you can consistently three star enemy bases at the same TH level as you.

EDIT 2: If you are doing TH8.5, you probably want to go ahead and build the fourth Air Defense as this will essentially require that another TH9 attack you. ADs do not weigh too heavily and will not ruin the effect you're going for the way an xbow would. Most TH8 three star strategies involve air attacks, so if you build the 4th AD and archer queen, you will be much better at defending these without really increasing your matchmaking score too badly. In the same vein, you will want to build the new storages because their high hp makes for good shields for your ADs.

I'm a near max TH 8 and have been thinking about 8.5 when I go up. However, my clan wars twice a week. We are war-centric, as in we add and kick people based on what they can provide during war, without warring non-stop. Given what you mention at the end of your post, would you say I shouldn't adopt an 8.5 strategy?

To be honest, that's completely up to you. If you feel like maxing out TH9 is what you really want personally, then you shouldn't do TH8.5. However, if what you really want is to be the best asset possible to your clan in wars, then TH8.5 might be a good way to go. If I were you, I would at least try it for a while. If you find out you are just getting wasted of all your loot every time you log off and are getting frustrated, then stop and work on xbows. The only reason I said it's not worth it for 2x a week or less wars is that it seems a high price to pay for a benefit that only pays out twice a week. With the new clan level system, the benefit to your whole clan is probably greater than ever before.

You could try persuading your clan to war more often, to do mini-wars (where not everyone participates), or do employ a "war nexting" strategy where you don't even try if the matchup is too unfavorable. In this last case, you save the troop cost and emotional trauma of a fully invested, yet hopeless war. You also still get some loot and some xp. As long as you are clear about it with your clan, it is no worse than not declaring war at all. People who don't like it can just opt out.

Gotcha, and thanks for the reply. I personally like the 2 wars a week myself so I'm ok with that remaining that way.

I think your original recommendation is correct and I'll just try out the 8.5 strategy in my clan. We just booted some super TH 10 rushers who had x-bows and infernos but their troops were lower than mine. You can guess how their attacks went (hint, one of them was our #2 and 1-starred their 11). I want to try and help bring some more favorable match-ups and I think the 8.5 strat will help with that. Plus, like you said, if it doesn't work out I'll just drop some x-bows and work on the defenses at that point.

On a personal note, we had a TH9.5 join our clan recently. He has a pretty lousy base and generally gets three starred. But his attacks are beast and he consistently three-stars two other TH10s or maxed out TH9s. It has really helped us in wars because the matchups don't seem to be any harder, but we are getting +3 net stars.

at Th 8.5, you don't build the xbows, air defense, wizard tower, archer tower, or tesla. The point is that you have literally th8 defenses plus a queen. Building any other defenses automatically ranks you much higher than a th8, especially xbows.

It is true that everything is included in the algorithm, but in my experience infernos, xbows, and teslas are far more heavily weighted than anything else. So you can do TH8.5 and still build some of the other defenses, just know that you are partially nullifying the effect by doing so. In my opinion, you should either sell out and go all in with it, or not do it at all. But that doesn't have to be the case. A single archer tower is very unlikely to make you count much more than a TH8.

Another idea I just saw elsewhere on the sub: if you're doing TH8.5, you will definitely want to build the new storages and level them up so you can use their high HP to make it harder to three star your base. Basically if the enemy clan can't three star you with a TH8, you are generating value defensively because you effectively count as a TH8 for war matchmaking. Adding the fourth AD, AQ, and the extra storages makes it much much harder for a TH8 to three star you.

You probably want to go ahead and build the 4th AD and upgrade it to level 6. That basically requires a TH9 to three star you. You can upgrade existing defenses too, just remember that anything you do defensively will add to your score. It just won't add as much as the xbows will. The whole thing is by degrees anyway.

I've done some pretty extensive research on it both on this sub and the SC forums. Most of what I learned there has been combined with my experience in three different war clans in nearly constant wars since clan wars started.

You can infer a lot about how bases are rated using the war map. Over time, you pick up trends, and the biggest one I noticed is that infernos and xbows are extremely significant in causing an overall weaker base to outrank a stronger one.

Ya, you are right, you cannot look at the raw DPS numbers alone in any case. As a war base and someone who just barely went from max TH8 to now having TH9 this week, I found your post particularly interesting.

This strategy has been nerfed a bit with the latest update as theoretically, walls and heroes now count for more in the matchmaking algorithm than they used to. However, offense is still much more valuable than defense, and it would appear from village rankings on war maps that xbows and infernos are still the heaviest weighted by far.

The answer to your question depends heavily on what TH level you are. If you are TH9, and you upgrade everything except the xbow, you will probably "match" as a mid to high level TH9. You certainly won't count as maxed though, so if you can three star bases similar to yours or slightly stronger, then you're in good shape. If you already have maxed out offensive power, then I'd recommend you move on to TH9.5.

If you are a TH10, then the infernos will probably outweigh any benefit you would get by not building xbows. So you would probably want to avoid those as well.

Thanks..I am New Town Hall 9 With Max De fence and Offense of TH8 except wall..I Have Terrible Experience In my Last 3 War when I Finish Maxing my all De fence.. I Cant 3* My Mirror Opponent..Although I have Max TH8 Troops..

My Opponents are all New TH9 with almost max TH8 defense ..and very few times Max TH8..

So, Now I don't Want To build Only XBOW..Will It Help?? Or I Totally Ignore All Type Of De fence and De fence Related Upgrade also..??????

I would recommend that you hold off on building the new TH9 defenses. Start as you did with the lab, spells, and queen. Upgrade your army camps and CC as soon as possible. Really, you can't expect to be tripling low TH9s with high TH8 offense. It's just too hard.

Your best and fastest ways to get three star TH9 strategies going is to upgrade your hogs to lvl 5 and your lavahounds and loons. Lavaloon and strategic hogging will be a staple for you for the rest of the game so you should unlock them and learn them as soon as you can.

Once you have all camps upgraded, CC, lab, spells, queen, and barracks, THEN go ahead and start building defenses. The one exception to this is that you can go ahead and build the 4th air defense. You can also upgrade your air sweeper.

I would highly recommend first using your gold to upgrade the CC. That is huge because 30 space allows you to bring max golems and lava hounds on offense. A lot of the extra gold can be dumped into walls. You don't have to completely ignore defenses while doing this, just remember that everything you do defensively will impact your defensive score and the whole point is making your offense much more powerful than your defense. At the end of the day, one archer tower or cannon isn't going to significantly impact your total score. Avoid those xbows and teslas though, since they are weighted much higher.

I can chime in here. I have a TH8.5 for my alt account. Bombs and traps seem to have little weight in war algorithm so I went ahead and got those. I just recently added 1 archer tower and 1 tesla that I will max to th8 standards. I'm still the lowest ranked th9 and had been matched with a rushed th9 since near max th8 anyways.. The extra seeking air mine and giant bomb allow you to make an anti-hog and anti-drag base. Base design is really important as well for anti-gowipe'ness. I don't get 3 starred very much at least by mid and below th9s.

I don't raid on this account just collect mines n pumps. I sit at around 1,000-1,100 trophies typically so my base isn't crushed very often for loot. I will boost elixir and sweet dark sometimes to keep the lab going or hero upgrades.

It does work for matchups. I personally don't need the help I hit much higher during war it is more for my clanmates sorting out 3 star strategies. And to offset the clanmates that continue to upgrade defenses despite months and months of warnings about what will happen all while their labs sit idle..

Since I don't raid on this account I plan to take this a step further and upgrade to th10 in a couple of months. Buy the new bombs n traps, continue working slowly on walls and upgrade camps, lab, spells, heros for more offense. I would not recommend doing that on any account you wish to actually play the game on though because of the loot penalty.

So yeah I have a defensively maxed th9 with 5 builders that went balls-to-the-wall upgrading. Huge mistake - don't ever do that. Your defense will quickly outpace your offense which puts you upside down in war matchups. And I have this th8.5 I've had going for a few months now. I have actual experience both ways if anyone has a question about it.

I made this but I'm sure more talented will start designing ".5" bases as this catches on. Its very anti-hog though and typically underestimated in war. Drags and GoWiPe get 2 stars on it fairly easy but it usually absorbs several attacks before a maxed th9 or th10 comes down to 3 star it - if that even happens.

I am virtually maxed on TH9 and considering the TH9.5 concept. I was wondering what the consensus is regarding the idea that upgrading some select existing defenses from TH9 (such as Teslas to Lvl 8) would weigh less than building new TH10 defensive structures i.e. 3rd Xbow, Infernos.

I can pretty much guarantee that infernos are the most heavily weighted part of the equation. The clan we are facing in war right now has a TH10 with two infernos and bascially TH7 or worse other defenses. He is ranked right above a nearly maxed TH9. Other similar circumstances as this have led me to believe that xbows are next in the list followed by teslas. Anything you do at TH9 will be less significant than the inferno/xbow.

Hi, im currently a TH8.5 with no xbow, and still no additional TH9 archer tower, wiz tower, and tesla. So basically my defense is as many as a TH8, but their level is only max TH7. What im planning to do now is to go up to TH10, then build 2 inferno towers ONLY. My question is would i be matched up to a TH10 player during war? or only a TH9? since i have 0 xbow but with 2 infernos. i also dont have the other additional defenses of a TH9 and TH10 except for the 2 infernos. Thanks!

This is tough to say. Honestly, it's very hard to tell how much one inferno is worth to the matchmaking system. You would certainly be ranked below all of the normal TH10s in your clan, but there is a legitimate chance that you could be ranked above some of the higher TH9s once you add infernos. They are very powerful, but they are also the single heaviest weighted defense in the algorithm. My advice would be to avoid them. Instead, focus on walls, heroes, and strong point defenses. If you are determined to do it, you could always start building them on prep day, then see how far you move up in your clan's ranking in the next war. If you move up beyond where you can consistently attack well, then you probably overdid it. For example, if you are currently #20 in your clan and you could easily three star your own clan's #19 and #21, then you are in good shape. If adding infernos moves you to #10, and you would have no hope of tripling your clan's own #11 and #9, then you probably moved too far with the infernos. You can cancel building them once that war ends (note that this will "waste" 5M gold). If you're too skittish about wasting that, my advice would be to not build the infernos.

Yes, and you bring up a good point here. Walls and heroes actually weigh very little in the matching/scoring algorithm. So building/upgrading those is probably the best thing you can do to leverage the effect of TH8.5. Once you upgrade your TH, the first thing you should do is build the new walls. Then start your lab and spell factory upgrades. Spend your gold on the CC upgrade and leveling the new walls. Spend the balance of your elixir on army camps. Once all your offensive buildings are maxed, then you can start on defense. Here it is up to you how long you want to prolong the offensive advantage you have. Since you decided to do it in the first place, you might as well enjoy the advantage for a while and focus on walls and heroes for a bit. You can build the new defenses (aside from xbows and tesla) if you want to without having too much impact scorewise.

Great advice here - I am about to take this plunge and figure there is limited harm in building the 4th AD and upgrading to give myself a 6th AD. Is this stupid? I figure it will pretty much force th9s to attack me, and eliminates most th8s from attacking in war. Thoughts?

Yes, build the 4th AD for sure. That has much more value in your defense than an xbow actually. If you really want to milk this strategy for all it's worth, focus your builders on the offensive stuff first. It will take a long time to get that AD leveled up anyway.

Not sure where you saw that. Everything I have read on SC forums, this sub, and in clan chat with others has indicated that heroes do not have much weight.

My experience in three different serious war clans corroborates this. Several times we were matched with clans that were more or less even with us, but had way higher walls and heroes. Naturally they crushed us. You can also see it in the way bases within a clan are ranked on the war map. A TH9 with level 20 heroes is sometimes ranked behind a TH9 with level 10 heroes, especially if the guy with 10s has fully upgraded xbows and the guy with 20s doesn't.

I've also seen a rushed TH10 with lvl 2 infernos and heroes below lvl 10 outrank a fully maxed out TH9 with lava walls and lvl 30 heroes. So the defenses certainly outweigh the walls and heroes.

As much as this TH8.5 interests me, there is a flaw in your ranking of teslas having more weight than other defensive structures. I'm a mid TH8, I have max mortars, wt, & tesla. I maxed tesla early as I saw the damage they can do. I've always been mid to low th8 ranked on the war map. Now that my offense is up, I'm beginning to max my point defenses, and I'm still lower than other th8 with maxed point defenses and non-max tesla. I will take this to the next level when I finally go to TH9. I will focus on offense, heroes, walls, and new structures (minus xbow). The added traps can alleviate many hogs, the added ad can minimize the dragloon attacks. My rough upgrade order is lab, cc, camps, de racks, aq, ad, tesla... I will not take any defenses to th9 until i can consistently 3 star th9 in wars. Then I will build x-bows and upgrade defenses in this order: tesla, cannon, wt, x-bow, at, ad. I'm also a big fan of upgrading them simultaneously because it's better in this fashion. You will have weak defenses as they upgrade, but once done they are fully functional... instead of half or less functional for 4 times as long. And from experience tesla aren't weighted very heavily, so these will all be maxed first, because they do the most damage.

I can't see a reason not to start the 4th AD upon starting TH9 (with 5 builders). It effectively walls off most dragloon attacks - even if it costs you some matchmaking budget it will force a max th8 to hog or gowipe you or, more likely, another th9 is going to have to spend an attack on you.

I agree that teslas are weighed less than xbows and infernos. My experience is that they outweigh other point defenses individually. There were about 3 guys in my clan maxing out TH8 and their order would change periodically based on what point defenses they prioritized. Without fail, the guy with the most recent tesla upgrade regained the lead. That's why I inferred what I did about teslas.

Teslas have high dps, low hp, and low range. But because they are hidden, their strategic value is higher. It may be that a tesla weighs more than a single archer tower or cannon, but that multiple other point defenses outweigh a single tesla.

The better answer is that it depends. It depends on how much of the TH8.5 strategy you want to do, how intensely you want to pursue it, and what your other goals are.

If you want to maximize your value to your clan in wars, you want maxed out Air Defenses, heroes, walls, and anything offense related (camps, cc, spells, lab, etc). While maxing those things, you intentionally avoid the things that get weighted heavily in war matchmaking. None of the stuff you build at TH8 is really weighted all that heavily. So that's why the short answer is no. If you want to really be a force to be reckoned with in clan wars, then you need to max out your TH8 offense or else you're sort of missing the point. If you run a TH8.5 and get the fourth spell, but your spells are all level 1 because you rushed, you're missing out on most of the value you could be providing. If you have really low level defenses on the other hand, you aren't really messing things up because the point of the .5 strategy is that your offense significantly outpaces your defense. Since defense is more heavily weighted in war matchmaking, but offense has more impact on war outcomes, you generate added value to your clan for wars.

Another consideration on maxing TH8 or not is that the less you do defensively, the more vulnerable you will be. Remember that TH10s get a 50% loot penalty attacking you at TH8. This drops to 10% once you get to TH9. So if you are defensively a TH8, but have a level 9 town hall, TH10s will steamroll you whenever they can. If you raid a lot, are online a lot, and don't go to high in trophies, you'll be fine. If you are more casual about farming, you could find it tough sledding.

The last thing I'll add is that it is very easy to "catch up" from doing a .5 strategy because your offense is very strong. So it's not like traditional rushing because you have the firepower to take the loot you need.

I'm not sure what TH level you are or what your goals are, so it's hard to say. The short answer is yes, you should upgrade all of those.

Army camps are far more beneficial than almost any other upgrade out there because the added army space is what enables higher level attacks. Note that barbs are probably not part of a high level attack.

However, to get enough loot to be able to upgrade and progress, you need a strong barch to farm quickly and efficiently. So upgrade your barbs as soon as your camps are done.

So If I am going with 8.5, the new buildings that i would beget are traps, AQ, storages and AD6. The other ones would increase my war "tier" by a lot or would be pointless (like defenses level 1), is that correct?

Generally yes. Technically speaking, you should also only upgrade the troops you plan to use for war, but that's getting a bit extreme. The new update and the recently released matchmaking weights would suggest that there are better, more nuanced ways to game the matchmaking algorithm. The whole thing is by degrees anyway, so do as much or as little as you like.

hey thanks for all your help here i just have 1 question, for th8.5 is it ok if i lvl up all the defence building i already have for example lvl up at and cannons to lvl 11 and mortars and wt up 1 lvl?

You can sort of do whatever you want with it. If you upgrade all your defenses, you aren't really doing the strategy at all. Which is fine, but expect to draw tougher war matchups. The whole point of this is that you sandbag your defensive upgrades while maxing out offense. It's not an all or nothing thing. You can do as much or as little as you like. The more you upgrade defensively, the more weight you count for in your clan war matchup. The less you do, the softer matchups you will get as a clan.

The whole thing is by degrees, so the more you build defensively, the less effect you get. Definitely max your traps amd air defense so you can stop hogs and dragons. Other than that its kinda whatever you want to do.

Great post! As I am only days away from TH9 I am thinking of going this route.

I am, however, having a hard time deciding on research. Sadly I didn't max research as a th8, but having upgraded all buildings, walls and sitting on 80k Dark Elixer, I felt it was time to move on.

Since I farm a lot, I am thinking I should dump excess dark elixer in research, since I will mostly spend elixer on upgrading structures. And once my Queen hits lvl10 I will be leveling King and Queen together, so the consumption of dark elixer will only increase.

So, do I upgrade golums first? Or stick to elixer upgrades, get queen to lvl10 and then do dark elixer research and let my hero's sit at lvl10 for a while?

You want your Lab running full time. It's the slowest part of game progress but also the most important (both for looting and for wars). And the DE lab upgrades are the most important and difficult to achieve so focus there first.

So I see it tossed around that xbows weigh a lot in war matching, but how much? I think it needs to be discussed how significant the weighting is in order to understand how much of an advantage you gain by not building any xbows. Is it truly 0.5 of a TH level? I doubt it.

You can have level 3 xbows and no other new th9 defense structures (i.e: the extra wiz tower, AD, AT, tesla) and be ranked higher than someone who has no xbows, but th8 level on all the extra defenses.

Right. But the nomenclature is such because at TH8.5 you are half TH8 (defense) and half TH9 (offense). So you call it TH8.5. It doesn't really refer to the amount of "advantage" you gain. As I said above, I would actually argue that the advantage is more than half of a TH level because if you are TH8.5 and you can three star two TH9s but only give up 3 stars, you become a huge asset to your clan. Your offense is worth up to 6 stars but your defense is only -3 in the worst case.

It's difficult to quantify in isolation. However, if you examine the ranking of war bases in your clan and the opposing clan over time, you will eventually see that the impact to defensive ranking is most heavily influenced by infernos, then xbows, then teslas.

The reason it's called half of a TH level is that at TH8.5 you basically have the same defense as a TH8, but you attack on par with TH9s. I think the war impact is actually more than half of a TH level because even though offensive ability is also taken into account in war matchmaking, you get two attacks but only defend one base. So if you give up three stars, but earn 6 against similarly leveled players, your clan gains 3 stars in the net score.

True, that would be pretty powerful as long as you could ensure that you wouldn't give up three stars on every base. If you have literally zero defenses, you can at best tie every war. So you need some legit players who can keep the enemy from getting a perfect score.

I think the ideal scenario is that no more than half of your clan do the .5 or strategic offensive rushing strategy.